http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE COCAINE DEBATE swirling around George W. -- did he or
didn't he? If so, when? Should we insist on knowing? All
of this is looking through a telescope from the wrong end.

What's interesting about cocaine is not that it's against the
law, though that's important, but why it's against the law, what
it can do to the person who smokes it, snorts it or shoots it.
Cocaine kills. The loud, clear message of cocaine is that it has
a potent and deleterious effect on the mind, body and behavior
of an addict. But it takes time.

In an exhibition on the history of drugs in the United
States, at the Drug Enforcement Administration offices near the
Pentagon, a video illustrates the effects of cocaine addiction on
a once-beautiful model. In the opening footage we see her as
she looked in her early photographs, lustrous long hair, bright
eyes and porcelain skin. Then she takes off her wig, exposing a
head with no hair; she rubs off her makeup, revealing a rough
and callow skin, and finally takes out her false teeth.

It's clear that George W. has accomplished a lot since he
turned away from alcohol at the age of 40, and hasn't used
cocaine, if he ever did, for 25 years. He has matured. Nothing
about his teetotalling suggests an earlier debilitation of drugs.

But since the question of whether he ever used cocaine
has been blown out of proportion by a voracious press, and
the candidate's clumsy offerings of dribs and drabs to questions
he said he wouldn't entertain, only he can put the summer squall
of controversy to rest with a homily. He could speak to
youngsters about his experience -- or lack of it.

Most young people "do coke," or any drug for that
matter, because of peer pressure. It's exceedingly hard for a
young man to single himself out by not doing what others do.
(You can't fake not inhaling coke.) If George W. never tried it
he could explain how he's proud of that decision, because coke
was especially tempting as socially acceptable in his peer group
in the '70s. If he did experiment, he could explain what he
learned from the experiment.

In the 1970s cocaine was a status symbol for aspiring
middle-class sophisticates. It was described as a drug without
a downside. The Grateful Dead wore spoons around their
necks and peddlers worked the crowds selling paraphernalia to
their fans.

In 1971, Newsweek magazine quoted the deputy director
of Chicago's Bureau of Narcotics: "You get a good high with
coke and you don't get hooked." Rolling Stone magazine called
it "America's star-spangled powder."

In 1974 the New York Times Magazine ran an article
headlined "Cocaine: The Champagne of Drugs," and featured
three users on the front page: Sigmund Freud, Sir Arthur Colan
Doyle and Pope Leo XIII. Cocaine as a chic, harmless drug
for celebrities was praised in People magazine, which identified
Waylon Jennings and Jack Nicholson as icons of the "70s coke
generation." The National Institute on Drug Abuse concluded
that cocaine was not a problem drug with serious personal or
social consequences when snorted recreationally.

Contemporary acceptance is instructive. It vividly shows
the confusion in the popular culture of the dangers of cocaine,
dramatically revealing the scientific community, which regards
itself as immune to emotion and popular opinion, as co-opted
by the pop culture. Medical "experts" and public health officials
ignored a century of documentation of the ravages of the drug.

As early as 1910 President William Howard Taft
identified cocaine as "more appalling in its effects than any
other habit-forming drug in the United States," and urged
Congress to restrict its availability. "The original 'war' on drugs
in the early years of this century was so successful that we have
no collective memory of that era," writes Jill Jonnes, in
"Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: America's Romance
With Illegal Drugs."

When the middle-class cokenoses suffered in the
shadows of the dark side of cocaine, glamour died. The drug
cartels and their pushers needed another source of customers.
They discovered crack cocaine, a cheaper and more deadly
drug, and they made the marketing decision to seek customers
in the inner city, creating an addiction for a drug that worked
much faster than cocaine. Things did not go better with crack.